Are you making the most out of your Facebook marketing strategy? Are you managing to turn your fans into customers?
Are you making the most out of your If you’ve just started using Facebook for business, I suspect your Facebook marketing strategy may be all about the numbers. The question I get asked most often by new clients is… “How can we get more Facebook likes”. My response is always the same. Facebook marketing is not a numbers game, it’s about engagement. Ten Facebook “likers” who comment, share and engage with your posts are more valuable than a hundred who never interact with your brand.
But let’s say you’ve reached the next stage, you’ve been using Facebook for business for a while, and you have built an audience who regularly engage with you. Are you doing everything you can to turn those fans into actual paying customers?
Here are a few of my top tips for upping your Facebook marketing game and converting fans into customers…
- Practice the Art of “Not Selling” – I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Facebook is a place for soft selling, by patiently nurturing your audience with valuable, entertaining content that answers their questions, they’ll come back for more. If your Facebook fans get a whiff of the hard sell, they’ll be gone faster than you can say “How about a thumbs up?”
- Collect their email address – You can do this passively by having a sign up form on your Facebook page. Most email marketing software programmes have an app that allows you to integrate a sign up form into your Facebook page. I’ll be honest, none of us give away our email addresses easily, so you may have more success by running a Facebook promotion or contest using third party software that gives an option to sign up to your newsletter upon entry. Once you have your fan’s email addresses, you have another way to connect with them, and you’re not at the mercy of Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm deciding who sees your content.
- Use Customer Testimonials as your secret weapon – Because 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. So how do you get more customer testimonials? Through running competitions that encourage this… A photo caption competition is a great way to get positive customer comments about your products and services.
- Set up a store on your Facebook page – If you’re using Shopify, Woocomerce, Ecwid or one of many other shopping cart platforms to sell your product through your website, you can very easily integrate a store into your Facebook page too.
- Lead them gently by the hand… Away from Facebook – Your fans are liking, commenting on and sharing your posts… Congratulations! You are engaged, or rather they are… The next step is to get them to click through to your website. This isn’t easy. These people feel safe chatting to you within Facebook, so make it worth their while, add some value. It might be a discount, or a coupon code for a product or service you’re selling on your website. But you don’t always want to be the King or Queen of discounts. So in your Facebook post you might give them one valuable piece of information that solves a problem. The link outside of Facebook promises 5 more… “Wham Bam thank you Mam”, you have click through!
If you would like to discuss your Facebook marketing plan in more detail, do give us a call. We’d love to hear from you.